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EXCLUSIVE
INSIDE AARO’S UFO HUNT
The Pentagon’s former top UFO investigator tells PARADIGM that he worked with a Lockheed Martin executive to trace claims that the company possessed alien craft back to a group of people trying to profit off of human-made aerospace technology.
Arguing that profit motives are driving false claims about alien life, the investigator also alleged that a congressional staffer once called him and told him to direct millions of dollars in funding to three people with ties to government UAP investigations and aerospace startups.
The comments by Sean Kirkpatrick, former director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), are the latest salvo in a years-long fight that has split Congress and the executive branch over claims that government officials and private contractors are hiding evidence of alien intelligence.
Kirkpatrick’s comments follow the publication this month of a new memoir by Jay Stratton, another former top military UFO hunter, that has renewed controversy over these claims.
In the book, Stratton, who has clashed and traded allegations of misconduct with Kirkpatrick, alleged that former Lockheed Martin executive Jim Ryder confided in him in 2009 that the aerospace giant possesses a dozen alien craft and has been working to reverse-engineer them. Stratton’s book also alleges that the Central Intelligence Agency blocked a move by Ryder to transfer possession of one such craft to the military.
Kirkpatrick said that he looked into claims related to Ryder, who served as a senior Lockheed research executive, including Ryder’s alleged contacts with the CIA.
“We confirmed he didn’t speak to those people, and any stories that came out of that period of time are just that—stories perpetrated by the same people who tried to claim Lockheed was involved,” Kirkpatrick wrote. “They also claimed other companies as well, but changed the story every time they were pinned down for any evidence.”
Ryder retired in 2011 and died in 2018. Anwesha Basu, the publicity contact for Stratton’s publisher William Morrow, did not respond to a request for comment.
Kirkpatrick’s comments offer new details that go beyond what is disclosed in a 2024 AARO report about the lengths to which his office went to investigate claims about Lockheed Martin, as well as offering a new explanation for alien technology claims: profit.
“As for the Lockheed allegations, I investigated that with Lockheed’s Chief Tech Officer and found it [to] be connected with people who had both misled the company and were trying to make money on aerospace tech unconnected to aliens,” he wrote. “It is convenient that these stories and allegations always involve someone who knew it all but has died.”
Lockheed Martin’s press office did not respond to a request for comment. Steven Walker, who served as the company’s chief technology officer from 2020 to 2025, did not respond to requests for comment sent via LinkedIn or SRI International, a research institute that lists him as a board member. Before his stint at Lockheed, Walker served as the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Asked to elaborate on the alleged profit motives driving claims about alien technology, Kirkpatrick said he was pressured to direct government funds to people making such claims.
“There were the earmarks that they tried to get Congress to put in to direct me to funnel money to these people to ‘investigate’ UAP,” he wrote. “I had one staffer call me up and direct me to send several million dollars.”
Kirkpatrick named three people with ties to government UAP investigations and aerospace startups who were supposed to be the recipients of those funds. He did not respond to follow-up queries seeking more details about his claims, and PARADIGM is withholding the names pending further reporting.
“I told them to put it into writing and I’d run it by legal,” Kirkpatrick wrote, recounting his alleged call with the unnamed staffer. “They backed down.”
Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough, who handles queries about AARO, did not respond to a request for comment on Kirkpatrick’s allegations.
AARO’s 2024 report found no evidence that the government and private contractors were reverse-engineering alien technology. The report, which looked into claims the CIA had blocked transfer of alien material from private contractors to the military, largely attributed such claims to “circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.”
A second AARO report, which is expected to provide more details on historical UFO investigations and military disinformation about aliens, has been in the works for years but has not been published.
In a statement to the Hill published Oct. 23, Rep. André Carson, D-Ind., said the Trump administration had slow-walked UAP transparency and demanded the release of AARO’s findings.
“I’m calling for the immediate release of this report, which is expected to provide additional findings of historical military and intelligence investigations of UAP including how incidents were investigated, the role of classified programs, and whether relevant activities were appropriately disclosed to Congress,” Carson said in his statement.
AARO’s initial findings have not satisfied a group of lawmakers who have been pushing unsuccessfully since 2023 to pass a law that would assert eminent domain over “technologies of unknown origin” and “biological evidence of nonhuman intelligence” held in private hands.
In June, Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., two co-sponsors of the original 2023 eminent domain provisions, again proposed an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that would assert government ownership over alien material.
In July, the House of Representatives passed an amendment to its version of the defense bill that contains eminent domain provisions.
It remains uncertain whether the provisions will survive in the final version of the bill, which is expected to pass before the end of the year.
OF NOTE
A new report describes a near collision in June between a British Airways jet leaving London’s Heathrow Airport and a “shiny silver object” roughly the size of four toasters. The pilot described the object as a drone, while a British air safety board concluded the object’s nature was “unknown.” (Metro article; safety board report)
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Song of the week
Many people who interacted with Sean have negative things to say about him. A number of people who contacted AARO with their claims found him to be dismissive. Stratton thinks he was working for the Legacy Program. People should be cautious when listening to anything he says.
I’d love to see an objective (outside the UFO bubble) legal analysis of the annual UAP NDAA campaigns. Who’s writing this legislation, who’s lobbying for it, what business, personal and national interests do they have, what is the broad legal interpretation of the language (what is and what isn’t a UAP, NHI, etc) and its implications of both what they were seeking and what was passed etc
Honestly I can’t understand how a major media organization hasn’t scrutinized this yet. Elected leaders are giving legal status to “non-human intelligence” in our defense spending bill and no one is paying attention.